Jane Pitkin Curtis

1918 - 2022

Jane Pitkin Curtis

Woodstock, VT — Jane Pitkin Curtis was born on June 7, 1918, at Boston Lying-in Hospital to Donald Stevenson and Dorothy Bacon Pitkin. When Germany attacked France during World War I, Jane's father joined the Reserve Mallet, a unit of Americans attached to the French Army. He drove a truck containing ammunition for the French cannons. The unit then joined the American Army once the United States entered the war. He returned home in 1919 to see Jane for the first time. "Well, I'll be god-damned" he said.

While growing up, Jane regarded her younger brother, Donald S. Pitkin, Jr., as "the greatest pest in the entire world," but he provided a firm foundation for Jane's life. Through his years of anthropological field work, she acquired a strong love for Italy.

During the depression Jane's father left the family real estate and insurance business to farm in Scituate, MA. He had training in agriculture at Harvard's Bussey Institute. The Pitkin family raised cauliflower and tomatoes for the Boston market. Jane loved her cats, dogs, and horses, especially her Shetland pony, Molly.

Jane attended Cohasset Country Day School, Derby Academy in Hingham, MA, and Scituate High School. She also loved Camp Quonset on Cape Cod, where she taught sailing as a junior counselor.

In her family it was common to pick up a paintbrush. At Smith College Jane majored in art history and European history. Her interest in art led to a position as a guide at the 1939 New York World's Fair art exhibit. She continued sketching and painting, having numerous exhibits of her work throughout her life.

In 1940 she married Willis Lansing Curtis of Marlboro and Scituate, MA. They had many happy adventures together: dairy farming; running the Yankee Bookshop, the oldest independent bookstore in Vermont; traveling to buy books in England; to the southernmost tip of Argentina, to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, to Italy, skiing in British Columbia, researching Siberian tigers in eastern Russia, sailing in the Aegean and on the coast of Maine. One of her favorite destinations was the family house on Monhegan Island, Maine, 10 miles offshore and reached by an unpredictable (sometimes glassy, sometimes terrifying) passage.

Jane passionately loved New England and its hills and streams. She served on the boards of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, the Green Mountain Club, on the Hartland, VT, Planning Commission, and on the vestry of St. James Episcopal Church, Woodstock, VT. She was a longtime member of the New Century Club of Woodstock, of the Woodstock Learning Lab, coined the term and was a founding member of Women for a Change. She was an activist who cared deeply about her country. She participated in marches and demonstrations against nuclear arms in Washington, DC, against the Vietnam War in Montpelier and Woodstock, sometimes alone; and attended the Women's March in Montpelier on January 21, 2017. Most recently she protested against the policy of removing children from their parents at the US-Mexico border, and rallied for Black Lives Matter at Tribou Park in Woodstock. She hosted fundraisers in her back yard and worked to get out the vote.

Together with her husband Will she wrote a number of books, including Antique Woodstoves, Welcome the Birds to Your Home, reprinted as Backyard Bird Habitat; and with Frank Lieberman Times Gone By: Woodstock, The World of George Perkins Marsh, Frederick Billings, Return to These Hills: The Vermont Years of Calvin Coolidge, Monhegan: The Artist's Island, Vermont's Long Trail, and with Howard Coffin, Guns Over Lake Champlain. She co-authored with Will Curtis the two volumes of The Nature of Things.

In 2018 she was honored as Citizen of the Year by the Woodstock Rotary Club, and in 2019 she was one of the recipients of the Vermont Democratic Party's Curtis-Hoff Award.

She was predeceased by a daughter, Elizabeth. She is survived by her daughter Katherine Curtis Donahue and her husband William J. Donahue; her grandson Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa and his wife, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, their daughter Alex Helena Donahue Ochoa of Haverford, PA; Samuel C. Donahue and his wife Ashley Cross Donahue and their sons Owen and Grant Donahue of Truckee, CA; and James P. Donahue and his wife, Allison McGuirck, of Truckee, CA.

Jane died peacefully at her home on February 7th, 2022 services are being planned for a later date.

Donations in Jane Curtis's name may be made to Smith College, Northampton, MA; or to the Connecticut River Conservancy in Greenfield, MA; or to the Lucy MacKenzie Humane Society, Brownsville, VT.

An on-line guestbook can be found at cabotfh.com